My neighbor came back from a hunting trip with 65 lbs of wild boar . . . he wants me to smoke a couple of shoulders for him. I expect the fat content to be low, so I plan to wrap them in bacon first and smoke them like any other pork shoulder. Any other advice?

My neighbor came back from a hunting trip with 65 lbs of wild boar . . . he wants me to smoke a couple of shoulders for him. I expect the fat content to be low, so I plan to wrap them in bacon first and smoke them like any other pork shoulder. Any other advice?

I've never personally smoked wild boar, but one of my family members in Alabama (who taught me everything there is about BBQ) has done it several times with bacon and it's great. I know he goes lower on the smoke, about 200-225, which is about 1.5 - 2hrs per pound. Although I'm not sure if he brines the meat, he does inject the meat. He places the meat in an aluminum pan with a little apple juice and cider vinegar, smokes uncovered for awhile (not exactly sure of how long) and then will cover in foil for the rest of the way. He loves using apple and peach wood and will throw a little hickory in there for a little peppery flavor. Meat was great and the tacos we made the next day were phenomenal! Looking forward to your report on how yours turns out.

Logged

Jeremy Baker

"An escalator can never break: it can only become stairs. You should never see an Escalator Temporarily Out Of Order sign, just Escalator Temporarily Stairs. Sorry for the convenience." - Mitch Hedberg

I guess it depends in part what they've been eating. I've had some wild pork that was just too funky- even for me, whereas we used to eat a lot of wild boar when we lived in Iran. I never noticed a bit of funk but maybe the bbq sauce covered it up?

Logged

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool. -Richard P. Feynman

Laws are spider-webs, which catch the little flies, but cannot hold the big ones. -Anacharsis

No idea - the only wild boar I've had was wild "bar", which is a castrated boar. Apparently where this guy I know hunted in FL the guides would castrate any male boar the dogs cornered and then let it go again. It tastes better apparently.

Anyway, that's why I was thinking "test piece". And maybe brine one and then you could blend the meat for your desired level of gaminess

Ok, so the shoulder is now thawed and I just realized it has a bone in it. Any idea how much this will shave off the smoking time? Should I cut the bone out? It is 9.5 lbs as is. Instead of two shoulders I'm going to do the shoulder and a bunch of sausages - those are easy. I'm skipping the brine because the neighbor said it's not gamy at all, they did a shoulder in the slow cooker last weekend.

My current plan is to smoke it for a few hours at low temp (~200) to let the meat take on a bunch of smoke, then put bacon over the top and raise the temp to maybe 250 over night - I expect it to drop to under 225 before morning. Fiddle with the temp in the morning and get the meat up to 200F by 1 PM or so, then rest in a cooler, then pull it.

I plan to rub it with salt and pepper before it goes on, no plans for mopping. I'll make some kind of finishing sauce, I'm open to ideas on that. I don't want to do too much beforehand so we can really taste the meat, but anyone who wants to dump bbq sauce on it can.

Tom...I recommend treating this like a pork shoulder. I recommend a brown sugar/mustard application followed by a spicy dry rub. Smoke it at low temp 200ish then raise it up to 250-275F for the duration. This piece will take some time "overnight" is good. Monitor the internal temp 165F. Then foil/towel/cooler for a few hours. A few homebrews along the way will make for a happy time.

I think it is a good strategy. My routine is to put the meat in around 165 while it is real smoky and slowly let it rise up to 225. After about 3 hours it'll go up to 250 until done. Too long and it may get foiled to finish the cook within a reasonable time.

On an aside there is a 10# boneless butt thawing in my sink. Plans are to make some garlic chile kielbasa this weekend.

Logged

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool. -Richard P. Feynman

Laws are spider-webs, which catch the little flies, but cannot hold the big ones. -Anacharsis

Porkfest 2013 (aka Porkapalooza 2013) is done! The boar is smoked, pulled, and consumed. Ron, I did treat it like a pork shoulder, which in my case means nothing but salt and pepper. I let it go for 2-3 hours (sorry, can't be more precise than that, see below) with nothing else on it and then threw some bacon on top. My neighbor threatened me with bodily harm if I did too much to mess with the meat - not the one who shot the boar mind you, but the one who has a traeger and a BGE, is a homebrewer, and used to play semi-pro rugby in South Africa. I don't always take his advice, but in this case I did. I'll post some pics tomorrow or something.

Here's a brief run down of what we had:Smoked wild boar shoulderSmoked bacon explosionSmoked Scotch eggsSmoked buffalo turds, both atomic and notSmoked pork loin wrapped in pork belly (provided by the crazy South African)

We also hit a keg of Seamus pretty hard, plus some home made schnapps, a bunch of wine, beer, rum . . . 11 adults, 10 kids, 1 dog.

We discussed getting t-shirts made that said "Porkfest - no t-shirts, just pork", and the hunter wants to get a shirt that says "Tom smoked my hog, and it was awesome". You probably had to be there. The boar was really flavorful without being gamy at all - way better than store bought.

It's been a long day, not helped by the fact that Friday night was a long night - two of the neighbors came over around 10 to "help" with smoking the shoulder, which consisted of sitting in the kitchen drinking beer until 2 AM. But we smoked some cheddar while we were at it, that went into the ABTs. Good times!